WASHINGTON, June 24: President Pervez Musharraf has assured the Bush administration he will enforce a permanent end to infiltrations from Azad Kashmir into the Indian-held part, the State Department said on Monday.
President Musharraf gave the assurance again on Sunday to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who called him after reading an interview in which President Musharraf denied ever saying that he would permanently stop the infiltrations.
President Musharraf, in the interview with Newsweek, was also quoted as saying he did not talk about dismantling militant training camps in Azad Kashmir when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage went to South Asia on a peace mission this month.
But US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: “Deputy Secretary Armitage was given assurances by President Musharraf on June 6 that ending of infiltration across the Line of Control would be permanent.”
“These assurances were also given to the secretary of state, to the president of the United States in their conversations, as well as repeatedly to our representatives, our charge and ambassador in Islamabad,” Boucher said.
He added: “We’ve seen positive results from that commitment and we’ve also seen significant positive steps by India since then. We continue to believe that Pakistani actions on the camps are an important follow-up steps to keep this process moving forward.”
The Indo-Pakistan crisis flared last December but the tension has eased somewhat in recent weeks after signs of a reduction in the number of infiltrations across the Line of Control in Kashmir.
“The United States has heard this commitment quite clearly from President Musharraf. We’ve seen him carry it out.... So we have no reason to disbelieve him,” Mr Boucher said.—Reuters
